NIC IO address

olivermaunder · 02-03-2004, 04:48 PM

Hi

I'm running Mandrake 9.2, and I can't connect to my LAN. The network card works fine dual-booting WinXP, so it's not a hardware problem. It's a PCI card and uses the 8139too driver - this card worked fine using this driver on a previous Mandrake install with a different motherboard, so I know it's the right module.

I think the problem might be with the io-address assigned to the NIC. Running lspci and ifconfig give different values for the IO Base address.

Running lspci -v gives:

Code:

00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: Accton Technology Corporation SMC2-1211TX (rev 10)
        Subsystem: Accton Technology Corporation EN-1207D Fast Ethernet Adapter
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 18
        I/O ports at d000 [size=256]
        Memory at dc110000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
        Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled] [size=64K]
        Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2


[root@localhost olly]# ifconfig eth0 up
[root@localhost olly]# ifconfig eth0
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:04:E2:01:16:5D
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
          Interrupt:18 Base address:0xa000

Is the "I/O Ports" value given by lspci supposed to be the same as the "Base address" given by ifconfig, or am I just getting mixed up? I haven't had to deal with this sort of thing since the heady days of Windows 3.1 :-)

If they are supposed to be the same, how do I fix it? I've tried setting the base address with ifconfig, but it didn't work:

Code:

[root@localhost olly]# ifconfig eth0 irq 18 io_addr 0xd000 up
irq: SIOCSIFMAP: Operation not supported
io_addr: SIOCSIFMAP: Operation not supported

I've also tried setting it in modules.conf, but this also has no effect.

Code:

alias eth0 8139too
options 8139too irq=18 io=0xd000

Any ideas? This NIC has worked on a Mandrake 9.1 system using a different motherboard. I'm also getting this problem with Knoppix, so it's not just a Mandrake problem.

Let me know if you want any more configuration settings or details

Olly

michaelk · 02-03-2004, 08:29 PM

It could be due to the motherboard configuring the card for IRQ 18.
Try using boot option of noapic.

dubman · 02-03-2004, 08:43 PM

eth0 does not have an ip address...could this be an issue? try checking /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

should read:

DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
ONBOOT=yes

then try the command "#ifup eth0"

maybe you are making this more complicated than it needs to be?

olivermaunder · 02-04-2004, 03:15 AM

I'm certain I'm making it more complicated than it should be, but I don't think it's going to be that easy!

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 contains:
DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
ONBOOT=no
MII_NOT_SUPPORTED=yes
NEEDHOSTNAME=no

ONBOOT is set to no, but I guess that doesn't matter if I'm doing "ifconfig eth0 up"

I've also tried setting a static address with:

Code:

ifconfig eth0 192.168.123.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up

but that didn't make any difference. My router assigns addresses in the 192.168.123.* range, which is why I used those values.

I've also tried setting the card up with the drakconnect GUI. But that didn't work either.

I also tried running dhcpd - it showed DHCP requests going out, but the activity LED on the router didn't show any data. dmesg says something about eth0 being set to 100Mb/s after autonegotiation, so I guess something's getting through on the hardware level.

michaelk - I've tried setting "Plug and play OS" to both yes and no in the BIOS, but I'll try that boot option on the next reboot and see if it makes a difference.

Thanks for your help

Olly

olivermaunder · 02-04-2004, 03:33 AM

Thanks michaelk!

Tried the noapic boot option. Now posting this through Konqueror!

So, can you explain what the noapic option does? Will disabling apic have any other affects on my system. I've done a quick google, and it seems to mostly affect multi-processor machines - is this right?

Olly

michaelk · 02-04-2004, 07:51 AM

It disables apic

No problems with it disabled on my PC.